Video editing. AIW 9800 vs pinnacle studio av/dv help plz

[voodoochili]

Hi guys,
I'm just getting into doing some editing of miniDV stuff on my computer and need to get the hardware. I'm currently running a ti4200 so I can still game on this machine, but am trying to compare the hollywood av/dv vs the all in wonder 9800 pro for capture and effects and ease of use. any help is appreciated =)

 

[craneo]

First read and bookmark this site: VideoHelp Its undoubtably the best reference for the kind of information you are looking for. For editing and real production stuff check out .Video Guys

I've used the AIW 8500DV before i replace it with a 9800 Pro so I could game a little better. If you are trying to capture Firewire, the cards/hardware you metioned might be overkill. Analog is a different story. If I were to do it all over again, I'd skip the AIW because the tuner is almost worthless to me. I went S-video out of my digital cable box so I could get all the channels and not just the 100 or so from straight cable. I'd get a PCI capture card instead for less money and the 9800 pro to game with for a combined price that is less than the 9800 AIW. Granted, you lose the tuner.

Where you need real power for editing is in the software and most important, the hardware. Editing and converting are still very CPU/disk intensive. Depending upon how serious you are and your budget, I'd get a couple of raptures and perhaps a big old PATA drive to hold the copious amount of data you will generate during editing, etc. And although I'm a AMD fanboy, P4s do better in the media benchmarks. Get as fast as you can afford and also get 1G worth of memory, XP loves it and so do the editing packages.

 

[voodoochili]

so is this 99.00 pinnacle system card any good ? whats your take on this thing anyway

 

[oldfart]

With a DV cam, all you need is a Firewire port. Video card has nothing to do with it.

For software, I happen to like the pinnacle Studio 9. It has a good interface, is easy to use, has very good editing features. The downside is it is slow encoding. Ulead Studio 8 is twice as fast encoding, but the editing features are way behind Pinnacle IMHO.

 

[Falloutboy]

I agree with oldfart except for a few programs your vid card makes no difference. now on software I can't offer alot of advise since what I consider "good" is a bit out of your pricerange I use a Avid Media Composer at work and have Avid Xpress at home. Avid Xpress is the best software only video editor in my opinion on the market. but it also costs that too

 

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by: Falloutboy Avid Xpress is the best software only video editor in my opinion on the market. but it also costs that too

PC only I might agree. If we are including PC and Mac apps FCP trumps it. And cost is relative (as I'm sure you know).


Lethal

 

[Falloutboy]

Originally posted by: LethalWolfe

Originally posted by: Falloutboy Avid Xpress is the best software only video editor in my opinion on the market. but it also costs that too

PC only I might agree. If we are including PC and Mac apps FCP trumps it. And cost is relative (as I'm sure you know).


Lethal

yes I agree with you but until I can afford a dedicated editor for home I'm going to stick with Avid so I can duel boot and play games on the same system

 

[JonB]

I've been looking at this area for a while now (from a home user and work user angle) for a while now.

If your video source is always going to be from a miniDV camcorder, then the AIW card is pointless. It is only good for digitizing analog video sources, and not especially good at that.


Home editing can be relatively cheap if you are Firewire based. Shoot your video on a DV camcorder (don't buy a DVD recorder one, get the actual miniDV tape), then you dump your video to the hard drive using the editing software (see next paragraph), edit it down, add your affects and titles, then you can output it back to your camcorder via firewire. If you need VHS copies, then you hook your camcorder to the VHS input and get a topnotch copy (much better than you'd get from a video card). If you want DVD output, your files will need to be compressed properly into MPEG-2 format. I love TMPEnc for this for quality and speed, but there are other good ones. Some of them just plain stink, though. Be sure it can do Variable Bit Rate Two Pass. It is the only method worth using. DVD authoring is another subject altogether.

Software to do the editing is another deal. There are lots of inexpensive ways to go. I own Roxio Vidowave 7, Pinnacle Studio 9 and Adobe Premiere 6.5 (I ordered the upgrade to Pro 1.5, but haven't gotten it yet). Of them all, Adobe Premiere is the one I can heartily recommend. Yes, it costs a LOT ($699 retail), but you can find it cheaper (like just over $200 at http://www.academicsuperstore.com/ if you can verify that you are a student or a teacher). Pinnacle is good, but it isn't Premiere. Roxio Videowave isn't much, but it is easy and cheap.

I recently went to a vendor demo for a Turnkey video editing system. The sold AVID systems and Matrox RTX100 systems. I was blown away by the Matrox system. It uses the latest version of Adobe Premiere (Pro 1.5) and the things the Matrox add-in card does for video is amazing for the price. Total cost for the Pentium 4 computer (lots of RAM, lots of HD space, dual 19" monitors, etc..) was $4700 bucks. Having used two previous Media100 systems (one cost $60,000 and one cost $30,000), this does absolutely everything as well and usually better, plus I can avoid the Mac OS and hardware. My company will hopefully approve this purchase in the next few weeks. BTW, you could build your own duplicate Matrox RTX100 system for $3500 or less, but that isn't an option for my company. It must be turnkey.

any other questions or comments, let me know. I'm not a professional AV guy, but work with one and have developed a hunger for the stuff for home use.